Pond Reflections 1

Underpainted Square

I enjoy painting water and I especially like painting pretty landscape scenes with placid water and their reflections.   I made a return trip to a little spot in Scituate adjacent to the 3A Rotary called the Old Oaken Bucket Pond.   The pond itself is fenced off because it feeds the Scituate water supply.   Despite the fence, it was still easy to see.   I used an 8 x 8 inch square canvas on board that had been underpainted with a soft palette of grays, blues, greens and peach.  

Old Oaken Bucket Smearing Reflections

I sold the previous painting I did of this spot and although the two scenes I painted today are similar, the first time I painted here it was autumn with the variety of color you would expect. 

Well it's summer and it's green.   The amount of green in this scene was glorious in person, but as I started to record all the greens, it quickly became overwhelmingly green.  I even falsely injected reddish purples in my cool shadows, just to break up the amount of green.  I scanned the scene for any hints of non-green and where I saw it, I added it to the painting and pumped it up.


Once I had my canvas covered, I turned it 90 degrees and compared either side of the shorelines to make sure they mirrored each other.   I turned it back face up and used my two inch housepaint brush to draw down all the colors in the water to create the reflections.  

As a last step, I will use my palette knife to apply some ripples that pick up the sky color to paint in water lilies in the foreground.   Look for the finished painting on my website in a couple of weeks.